The Kitchen

Those nights where I can see you, at the corner of my eye- in the recesses where the retina may not reach, but the mind may hold its breath and delve- I find that you have waited for me. You exist only in the shattering of light alongside darkness; the flash of the photographer’s camera, or the death of the night amidst the glory of sunrise. But there in that snap, that time of momentary insanity; I find you, in the kitchen. You sit in obscurity in the darkest corner, eyes tormented from sobbing. I struggle to remember your form precisely: your black figure is wretched and incomprehensible, shaking at the dazzle from the artificial lights. Your pale face seems hysterical against the remaining relics of your make-up; long black marks tear open your cheeks and I bite my lip and try not to laugh. I stretch my arms towards you, but you recede… the light is on, and the fear has departed. But with each returning night you find me again, crawling through my skin with the flick of the light bulb. I turn my head towards you and your image dissolves. With each turn shrouded in the insignificance of blinking, I see you there repeatedly, in the darkness, on the kitchen floor. Sometimes you laugh with me. Sometimes I cry with you.

In the bathroom too, you wait for me. I sit in the bath and know in my heart that you had never been there at all, but the unknown depths of the bath itself know the troubles of my mind. Dressed fully I sit for reassurance, the running water preventing you from sitting with me. So long as I sit here, you never will; but as I wash the blood from my mouth every night, you stand at my elbow and watch me, and every night you sit upon my chest and eat my breath. I daren’t open my eyes, the singular moment betwixt consciousness and unconsciousness, life and death, is where you find the time to sit down and cry, in the darkness, on the kitchen floor. You paralyze me with your silence. You consume my soul as I sleep.

Tonight I know you are not awake, but still I know that you are also sat weeping, alone and afraid, where the day has not yet illuminated the ecclesiastical arrangement of mugs and glass, in the very back of my mind. Perhaps one day when I am too drunk I will tell you how you haunt me, but until then you shall sit alone in the darkness, on the kitchen floor. I think you will stay here forever. I think I will be here forever too.